[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Introduction - new installation

[Mike Rylander]

On 4/9/07, Jason Etheridge <jasone at georgialibraries.org> wrote:
> On 4/9/07, Larry Levesque <ka1vgm at levektronix.com> wrote:
> > Maybe I am missing something but is there a way to scan a bunch of ISBN and import them into the program from a web grab of info / MARC record?
>
> Hi Larry,
>
> Currently, any sort of batch loading has to be done server-side at the
> command-line level.  Through the staff client, you can load one record
> at a time through z39.50, or you can create a record from scratch by
> hand.
>
> I'm cross-posting to OPEN-ILS-DEV here; it should be easy to feed a
> list of ISBNs to a Perl/Python/Ruby script and have it batch retrieve
> from a Z39.50 or SRU service, or through the Amazon API (and maybe
> even a bash script and wget would do the trick in the case of Amazon,
> with REST).  Any volunteers?  If not, I'll give it a go soon-ish.
>
> I think we'd need Mike and/or Dan to explain how to get records thus
> retrieved loaded into Evergreen, though.

The easiest thing to do there would be to mimic the staff client.
Once upon a time in the long-long ago there was a component to accept
bib and holding records directly, but it was not nearly flexible
enough and was canned.  (In many foreign systems there are multiple
tags that refer to a single item, and none of them do things the same
way.)

I'd love to work with someone on a re-loader script that takes the EG
MARC dump format (which uses a (very slightly extended) version of the
MARC for holdings format) to import and optionally overwrite the bib
and holdings data.  It would be a client, and would be a good way for
someone to get their feet wet with OpenSRF programming and the
Evergreen API, as well as the starting point for a set of tools (maybe
plugins to the reloader) for migrating foreign bib and holdings data.
*hint-hint-hint*

-- 
Mike Rylander
mrylander at gmail.com
GPLS -- PINES Development
Database Developer
http://open-ils.org